Some people enjoy harassing other people with lawyers. Saying it’s not in their interest is meaningless when someone is willing to spend 100k on a neighborhood fence dispute.

The costs for replit isn’t the same as the costs for an individual. For a corporation the cost is already budgeted in and pre-taxes so why do they care?

To be honest though - replit is still going to pay significantly more in legal fees than the individual. That all said they almost certainly bear that cost while the individual may not be able to do so.

Because it’s a time suck. Even if you have deep pockets, you have limited time. And potentially bad PR.

By the time the threat is out, the PR damage is already impeding (see: this thread). And spending a few thousand dollar is simply not going to hurt a large corporation as much as it hurts an individual. By the way, this is similar for time: A large corporation sends a mail to the legal department and the case is taken care of. You need to find a lawyer, find the money, collect the evidence ...

If a client insists there was trade secrete theft, a good attorney would do their very best to argue this case and seek legal remedies. Most attorneys, being non-technical, would have to rely on experts to outline exactly what/how a trade secrete theft occurred.